“So Tom Tillman wouldn’t cover up a murder?”
“He certainly wouldn’t.”
“Your husband was murdered, ma’am. And I’m sorry about that. Has Tom Tillman been trying to find the killer?”
She leaned her elbows on the counter—a striking, sensual woman—and said, “You know a lot about me all of a sudden. Now I want to know a lot about you. Who you are and why all this interests you so much.”
“I guess that sounds fair,” the Trailsman said, and began to bring her up-to-date on some of his personal background. And on what had happened to Daisy and her brother.
8
The Tillman ranch was one of the places important Easterners always visited when they were in this area of the West. Noah Tillman—the man who’d created the ranch and so many different business holdings even he wasn’t sure exactly what he owned—was one of those big, powerful, quiet men who almost always avoided confrontation. He had plenty of enemies who felt that he’d somehow cheated them, mistreated them, bullied or bullshitted them.
He’d let you argue with him, pick a fight with him, even curse him in front of his minions. Of course, if you actually struck him, he’d likely lay you out. He’d been a bare-knuckle boxer for a brief period in his youth. He still had quick and deadly hands. But generally, he’d take any amount of verbal guff you cared to give him and say nothing. Just walk away.
A week, a month, maybe even a year later, Noah Tillman would express his displeasure. Not personally; not so you could even prove he was involved. But there would come a day when—after it was made sure that your family was not inside—your nice new house was burned down. Or you found your desperately needed line of credit at the bank had suddenly vanished. Or you found one of your regular visits to the local whorehouse resulting in a judge using you as an example of the kind of hypocritical church-going family man who was actually a whoremonger—and you would be forced to move and start all over again, shamed and scapegoated by your community.
That was how Noah Tillman got you. And he reveled in it. He knew you knew who was behind your sudden and disastrous misfortune, and he was damned joyous that you knew.
The Tillman ranch had more acres, more good grass, more water, more beeves, more cowhands, and more house than any place outside the gaudiest mansions of Texas.
Noah Tillman sat in his study. There was a touch of the extravagant about the huge room—mullioned windows, parquet floor, chairs and couches of Spanish leather, rugs from Persia and China, floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases, Noah being a well-read man—and a silence rarely broken. Noah never gave you much of his time, not even if you were an important personage. He found most conversations tedious and unrewarding. He spent most of his time reading books on the line of Caesars who both perpetuated and then ultimately destroyed Rome. He was especially interested in the games of the Colosseum, specifically the ones the Caesars created to honor themselves. He had accrued everything in his life. Now it was time to entertain himself in lavish and unique ways.
At the moment, he was not as impatient as usual. He had a real interest in what Ekert was telling him. He wasn’t happy with Ekert—he was rarely happy with anybody—but he was disturbed by what he was hearing and so he listened carefully.
“But at least we’ve got the third one now,” Ekert said. He was self-conscious sitting in such a fine leather chair. Sitting in front of a dangerous and completely incomprehensible white-haired gentleman with cruel, eagle-like features and dark eyes that seemed inhuman.
Tillman was always impeccably attired. Expensive, handmade suits ordered half a dozen at a time from Chicago; the finest linen shirts and cravats; and French cuffs adorned with large 24 carat gold cuff links that bore the heads of the Caesars. It was easy to see that he was hard of hearing. Despite his imposing presence, he had to tilt his head to the right to hear well and even then he lost a good deal of what was said.
“You seem very satisfied with yourself,” Tillman said.
“Well, things turned out all right.”
“You think so?”
It was easy to sense that Noah Tillman wasn’t going to turn the other cheek in this particular moment. He was going to confront Ekert and Ekert was just now realizing it.
“I pay you three times what you made before you went to work with me.”
“Yessir.” Nervousness in Ekert’s voice now.
“And when your mother was sick in Kansas last year, I let you take a full month off.
“And when your son took sick, I paid all the expenses at the Denver hospital.”
“Yessir.”
“I feel I’ve been loyal to you, Mr. Ekert.” He had started to play with his left cuff link. To cover it with his thumb and then rub it, as if the rubbing would produce a magical occurrence—a secret door sliding open, a genie in cowboy get-up suddenly appearing.
“Yessir, you’ve been very loyal to me, Mr. Tillman.”
“But now when I ask you to perform a simple task for me, you let me down.”
“Sir, as I told you, we killed the girl so she won’t be any trouble—”
“Yes, Mr. Ekert, you killed the girl all right. But that’s not the end of it.”
“It’s not?”
Tillman made a displeased face and sat back in his baronial leather chair. “A few minutes ago you sat there looking so smug, I wanted to slap you across the face.”
“I didn’t mean to look smug, Mr. Tillman.”
“Think, Ekert.” Tillman tapped his right temple. “Think it through. You’re not a stupid man.”
“Thanks for saying that, sir.”
“So sit there and think about it. There’s unfinished business here, Mr. Ekert. Business that could bring this whole thing down.”
“There is, sir?”
“Yes, Mr. Ekert. There is. Now I’m going to walk over there and get myself a brandy. And when I come back here, I want you to have your answer ready. All right?”
“Yessir.”
Ekert did his best to smile but couldn’t quite make it.
9
After Fargo told her about himself, Liz Turner told the Trailsman an interesting story, one that held elements of a late night campfire ghost tale.
Looking back through the Clarion files accumulated before she and her husband came to Tillman, she saw four stories over fourteen years that said basically the same thing. Eight travelers were reported missing over these years and the relatives of each one eventually ended up here in Tillman, insisting that their loved ones were last seen alive right here.
The funny thing was, Stan Tillman, Noah’s cousin, who had been sheriff before Tom, claimed not to have known anything about the disappearances. When Liz had confronted him with these stories, Stan said that these loved ones had to blame somebody for their relatives vanishing. Family troubles of various kinds was why these folks had vanished of their own free will.
When they’d first come here, Liz and Richard had paid the Tillmans the same homage that everybody else did. They walked wide of writing any stories that were in any way critical of the family. The newspaper thrived. Noah Tillman personally saw to it. They accommodated him in every single public dispute, even at those times when Noah Tillman was clearly acting illegally and being a bully to get his way.
Until the incident with the card game.
One of Noah’s nephews had played twelve beery hours of poker one night and lost a lot more money than he could afford. The man he lost it to was a friend of his. Or had been until this game. The nephew got so angry that the friend even offered to return his winnings. He valued the friendship too much to lose. But the nephew only scoffed. He didn’t want money, he said. He just wanted a chance to win his money back. After half an hour of browbeating, the friend finally agreed to play double or nothing, though he accurately predicted what would happen.